Facebook ‘Unfollow’ To Replace ‘Hide All’ In News Feed

Facebook is looking for ways to allow its users to unfollow friends who keep on spewing posts and comments that may be irrelevant or clutter to them.

A Facebook representative has spoken to Mashable that the social network is working on and testing a new feature to for users to stop following friends whose status updates and comments they want to hide from their News Feed.

Initially covered by TechCrunch, news of the Unfollow button focuses on how it will function in a similar way to how users were allowed to hide from friends.

If this pushes through, users may block or filter out friends’ content that they want to remove from their News Feed,without the need to create a rift by unfriending them.

The social network’s spokesperson told Mashable that the objective is to help Facebook users properly organize or curate content on their News Feed and see more content they really do care about.

The Unfollow button will not send a notification to the unfollowed friend, so Facebook users will have a fairly safe method to block content from a certain friend without his or her knowledge – an excellent way to hide content coming from past relationships, grumps, rabble-rousers, and unrestrained sharers.

In the statement, the spokesperson said Facebook users may Hide All or Unfollow a certain friend through the typical drop-down arrow found in the upper right-hand corner of a post in the News Feed.

The change from Hide All to Unfollow provides a simpler way for users to understand the choices made available for them, and other social networking sites mostly use the terms follow and unfollow.

Mashable believes Facebook is on a campaign to streamline or standardize the language across social networking platforms.

In addition, Facebook users will gain the ability to see friends they currently follow when they visit each friend’s Facebook page, as the “Friends” icon on a friend’s cover photo will turn into a separate icon that allows users to follow or unfollow that friend in their News Feed.

Facebook does not require its users to befriend other people such as a famous personality before they can follow them, so followers are allowed to see that personality’s public posts directly on their News Feed.

The Unfollow button exclusively works for a user’s friends so Facebook believes it will not affect the users’ option to follow their favorite personalities.

The Facebook spokesperson told Mashable that the Unfollow feature will roll out on the desktop site in the following weeks and will roll out on Android and iOS devices in the following months.

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